> Researchers are investigating how the United States can become more competitive in the manufacturing industry in the age of artificial intelligence.
> Manufacturing employment has fallen in both countries, yet in Germany, manufacturing's value added has stayed around 22 percent in the last 20 years.
So Germany has done well even before the age of AI. But are they well prepared for the AI disruption?
Because currently the article seems to be relying on past data from Germany to predict a future solution.
Germany has seen many revolutions, each of which was declared the demise of labor in manufacturing. AI is just the latest panic. Germany does well because Germany believes in the value of people. Unlike American companies, German companies are not bent on divesting themselves of employees. They see AI as a tool to leverage their workforce, not a reason to scrub people off their books. From that perspective AI is not a falling-sky moment.
It's a bizarre premise, because US productivity has outpaced both the EU and Germany over the last 25 years.
In 1995-1996, US and German GDP per capita were almost equal, at $30,000 to $31,000. Today the US is about 40% higher.
US manufacturing has grown substantially over that time. The vast gains in productivity are precisely the cause of the employment plunge in manufacturing. Real manufacturing output is up 78% since 1991.
Germany has maintained its outsized manufacturing export base in part through high degrees of protectionism and riding an artificially cheap currency (cheap for Germany, not for Spain, Portugal, Italy or Greece), to the detriment of Eurozone rivals.
Productivity is not the end all measure for the society. Suppose the Moser productive society would be made out of robots working 24/7 at high efficiency. Is that superior to a society where "inefficient" research happens?
Likewise GDP (even PPP) does not matter if it is distributed highly unequally. You get a handful of people with huge economic power, that's it.
Albeit in the case of Germany you're somewhat right (protectionism mostly designed to force manufacturing to happen locally), US productivity has not brought improved living standards where it should have.
> Manufacturing employment has fallen in both countries, yet in Germany, manufacturing's value added has stayed around 22 percent in the last 20 years.
So Germany has done well even before the age of AI. But are they well prepared for the AI disruption?
Because currently the article seems to be relying on past data from Germany to predict a future solution.